Saturday, January 3, 2009

This is a catch-up posting of a bunch of stuff...SEARCH ENGINES: Note that I have an earlier post where I have organized and commented upon a selection of the better search engines. I have now included Spific and Yahoo Glue I describe below.

Spific: This looks to be a very nice search engine utilizing Google Custom search. You can start by your own keywords or by suggested topics. You can also limit your search to various categories or timeframes. Once you run your search, you can further refine it by limiting to blogs, videos, forums, stores, etc. The Spific homepage has a short video to demonstrate how it works. [HT: Jane's]Yahoo Glue Beta: It's basically Yahoo search with some helpful organization. I did a search for "Koine Greek," and it produced a page grouped into: a Wikipedia entry, Images, Yahoo Answers, YouTube videos, and, of course, a Sponsored Links box. There are some search queries it does not understand, in which case it will offer to search on regular Yahoo. I tried another search for "Bible software" and it produced a page with: a news box (that was not relevant), a Google Blog search (with two of four links to Logos blog posts), more irrelevant results from thestreet.com, and, of course, a Sponsored Links box. VERDICT: possibly helpful [HT: Jane's]

Gmail tricks: Now this might be useful. If you have a gmail account, and your address is, e.g., abdefg@gmail.com, it turns out that you can add periods anywhere in your name, and the email will still get to you. (a.bcdefg@gmail.com or ab.cdefg@gmail.com or etc.) You can also use the plus sign after your name and add any text you want as well, and it will still get to you. (abcdefg+anything@gmail.com) Use this trick to help organize mail you send to yourself or when you subscribe to sites. Read more about about this trick and how to use it HERE.

LectureFox: Some time ago I noted that a number of universities are posting lectures online for free. LectureFox has accumulated these lectures into a searchable database. Search for "testament" to get the Yale OT lecture or "religion" to get philosophy of religion lectures from Edingburgh and Vanderbilt. [HT: makeuseof and while you here, check out some of the other sites he lists. Teachers should be aware of the use of "fake files" and the plagiarism stuff. The site does also offer--after a free subscription--a collection of useful shortcut sheets for Firefox, Windows, Google, IE, etc.]

Top Tools for 2009 from Jane's: Jane Hart always has interesting stuff, and here is her list of promising tools for 2009. I can confirm that I like Cooliris and Sliderocket. I'll have to check out some of the others. Also check out her review of 2008, part 1 and part 2.

Logos Related Stuff: Logos has been promoting a free Kutless MP3 download (the song is decent enough to be worth taking up space on your harddrive) as a way to generate publicity for and interest in their Bible Study Magazine. Check it out. Also worth visiting is their ThePastor'sLibrary.com which I found out about in one of their emailings. It is indeed directed to pastors to help them work with their congregations in developing a library. It is, as is to be expected, a promotional tool for Logos software, but there are some interesting findings in its Survey, some helps for pastors in working with their congregations in Budgeting Resources, comments on Library Development, the value of Bible Software, and some Recommendations including links to some good Resources.ESV Study Bible for OliveTree BibleReader: It is now available and if you hurry (by 2009.01.04), there is a 15% discount.

Marking with Voice Tools: I've tried this in the past, namely, grading papers by adding voice annotations to digitally submitted docs. This blog post has some helpful hints and check the comments as well. [HT: Steve's]